Half-century crisis and the Great Mustache Experiment
At 50, I faced a sports-car or ‘stache dilemma — but a shaving habits may be my greatest adversary.
I want to grow a mustache, but I keep shaving my upper lip. This impedes growing a mustache.
I used to shave every day to look fresh and clean for work. But in a newsroom, fresh-faced reporters get mistaken for slackers — editors find you at 4:58 p.m. on a Friday with a “just one or two calls” assignment that takes three hours because your key source has rocketed off to Saturn, where cell service is sketchy.
So I switched to a once-a-week shave. I shave Sunday night, let the stubble shag out by Friday to appear too haggard for last-minute deadlines, then shave again. Once you cut back your regimen, there’s no going back.
When I became a teacher, I kept the routine, hoping students might settle down if I looked half-crazed. It didn’t work — they wouldn’t notice if I were juggling flaming chainsaws — but at least I looked perpetually bleary-eyed.
People suggested I grow a beard. I tried, but by day eight, my face itched like poison oak. I could try a goatee, but after years of watching “Star Trek,” I know the doppelganger with the goatee is always the villain. I have enough personality issues without summoning my inner supervillain.
That leaves the mustache. Many great American men wore them: Mark Twain’s sweeping handlebars almost rivaled his prose; Teddy Roosevelt’s walrus came of age in the Rough Riders; Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers grew his handlebar for a $300 bonus from Oakland A’s owner Charlie O. Finley, then quit baseball rather than shave it for Cincinnati Reds Marge Schott’s clean-shave edict. Fingers reportedly told the Reds, “You tell Marge Schott to shave her dog and I’ll shave my mustache.”
Both of my dads sported a mustache. Dad 1.0 grew his to hide a lip scar from being punched at the Drake Relays. Dad 2.0 grew his mustache to look older — without it, he looked 15 when he was 25. Mom feared that before his stache, people would think she “robbed the cradle.” No one will mistake me for an infant, except maybe Baby Huey.
But I’m 50 years old now. I’m having a half-century crisis. I want to hang on to my youth and virility, even though I rarely displayed either quality. I must do what all men of a certain age do: make a silly change. So, I’ll either buy a sports car or grow a mustache.
My 49th year was a slump — maybe a style tweak will help. I can’t grow my hair — I went bald in my late 30s — and Dodge Challenger Hellcats run about $70,000. I proposed the sports car option to my credit union’s loan officer; they had to call rescue for him after he laughed so hard.
So I defaulted to mustache, which grows for free.
I think I can grow a respectable stache — not a Tom Selleck chevron or a William Howard Taft walrus, but perhaps a tight, military-style homage to Wyatt Earp.
Sunday night, I lathered up and glided the razor across my cheeks, chin, and neck. I paused, admired my hairy lip, and imagined a robust mustache taking shape over the summer. It would be a small change, but bold enough to make me feel like Mustache Dan — Power Dan.
Then I shaved it off as usual.
Change is hard.
Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, but don’t hold that against them. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it.
A few thoughts:
Nobody ever said that you have to have any crisis. Have it when you feel it. If it doesn’t happen, great.
You will feel the crushing reality that you’ve not used your potential or gone places or seen people that you could have, soon enough.
I am 62 and bald. I keep the hair on the sides short. A woman whom I respect insisted that she liked bald men like me most of all because there is honesty in accepting what I am, instead of cloaking it with what would have to be a Trumpian combover.
Or a rug.
Or a Van Dyke (look it up — you’re talking about it, but you’re using the term, “goatee,” whic defines the Abe Lincoln thing with no moustache).
That you, and countless men who wear the Van Dyke do not know this, tells you what to know about having one:
Don’t.
It was a fat middle-aged guy thing when I was in my 20s, and some guys started them and didn’t stop having one.
Don’t be like them.
They’re now beyond middle aged, fat — willingly, happily — wearing their sunglasses on their ball caps, and wearing their ball caps backward.
And they look even more silly doing that and then getting into a Maserati.
Or worse, a Maserati SUV.
Pro-tip - if you can power through 3-4 days of the itchy beard, as it gets longer, the itching fades until you don't notice it at all.